 Good evening this what's going on? I'm John Lee our guest this evening is Lucas Frerichs a member of the Davis City Council Lucas is running for re-election Lucas. I want to thank you for being on our show. Thanks for having me John. I appreciate it for sure Yeah for sure Normally what happens is we ask some questions about how you got here and then go into where you're going We're gonna kind of cut that short here and get into where we're going But Lucas you've been working for several years for the legislature and you've got a new job. Yeah, that's correct So why don't you start out by talking about your new job and your responsibility? Sure So after 10 years of working in the legislature in Sacramento just in January I started a new position here in Davis actually for the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources So UCANR I am the statewide government affairs and community relations manager for UCANR and UCANR is a division of the University of California That is a separate division not not it's not a part of UC Davis But a separate division of the University of California that actually does a quite a wide range of things Folks it has a very large footprint throughout the entire state of California UCANR is really sort of UC in your community The most well-known Programs that fall under the umbrella of UCANR include cooperative extension Which is a program that is in every single county in the state of California all 58 counties Also, there are in the cooperative extension You know is has roots of over a hundred years ago and all the land-grant universities So the University of California, of course is the land-grant University here in California and so ANR Cooperative extension in each county, you know through ANR You know works with small farm advisors really works with the farmers works with the folks in the ag community To ensure any Ag County Ag Commissioner absolutely to make sure and all the counties to make sure that you know the the research that the University of California is doing is able to be done and Applied and be helpful for the folks will locally and in who are farmers and throughout the state of California. So Excuse me You see recently put out a book on how they're having impacts Yes, and cooperative extension is far and away the definition. Yep of applied new research Yeah, going into the field and then seeing if it really works and if it does disseminating the information say what absolutely It's a critical critical part of the University of California's mission And then also there are a variety of other programs that fall under the UC ANR umbrella The statewide 4-H program Which is you know a youth development program that has similarly over about a hundred years old in, California the University of California administers 4-H and its Kids as young as four years old up till a sort of the 18 year old range. There are about 650,000 4-Hers throughout California a very large program so Five percent I'm probably getting my numbers wrong five percent about five percent. Yeah, and here's the kids. Yeah, and then also A variety of other major programs that fall under UC ANR the master gardeners program, which is a major statewide initiative Very important in David. It's very important very important here in Davis in Yolo County You know you locally here we have the Central Park Gardens, right in in Davis That is a program that is run by the master gardeners here in Yolo County But then there are a variety of other programs the integrated pest management statewide program a lot of the health and nutrition programs As well as even like there's a new program a couple years old called the master preservers program And it's similar to the sort of same kind of concept as master gardeners People take credit classes and earn credits to become sort of a master preserver that is a really you know Of course pretty hot topic right now in our society lots of people doing Preservation of foods and things at home and that kind of thing so it's pretty cool The the there are interesting economic analysis of what happened during the Great Depression in the 30s One of the things that was invented and popularized was the Mason jar Oh, yes, and it was because people were having what they later became victory gardens during World War two But yeah, the when I first studied poverty in college as an academic subject in political science There was a designated Level for poverty and urban areas and a lower poverty level for rural areas And that's because in the rural area not only is it less expensive, but you're more likely to barter You're more likely to use to grow your own food Preservation and in an urban society at that point we hadn't figured out yet how to I mean where we're going in this Conversation is how does Davis become more sustainable right? Okay? That's the bottom line in the 21st century That's what we need to be talking about Anything that leads to greater sustainability is worth talking about we have lots of fuzzy things that aren't but Certainly 4-H integrated past management and cooperative extension are great program Yeah, and it's actually interesting, you know just the last note on the preservers program like master preservers You know what's old is new again, right? You know, I mean it's this sort of you know things that were sort of were a major part of our society as far back as even the 1920s and 1930s and through the through the Great Depression are now all of a sudden You know everyone wants to do preserving of food again and of course growing of gardens So those are why you know both master gardeners and the master preservers are such a sort of Important programs and important face for public face for UCNR, but it's also they've become very popular as well So in my role as the director for Government affairs and community relations. I Travel statewide when based here in Davis you see an ours here in Davis, but I travel statewide And you know go visit all of our sort of outposts crown across the state different county offices cooperative extension offices, but also make Part of my role is to ensure that we are building relationships as the University of California with our local elected officials So whether it's members of the boards of supervisors in various counties members of city councils members of school school boards, you know along the way water district boards all those types of folks because the reality is Essentially a lot of these local elected folks are essentially like at the farm team of Ultimately over time, you know you you've been in Merced County Well, someone who's on the Merced County Board of Supervisors today in five years from now may be in the state Legislature Or even in Congress in Washington DC And so it's imperative for us to make sure that we've built relationships as the University of California Ag and natural resources division to make sure that those folks know the good work that we're doing in their communities today So that when they're in a position later on they will have those memories and have those Relationships and reactions and know what good work that you see is doing, you know I you said that to me last time and what's changed since then is term limits in the state Legislature So there's not as much churn as there's been in the last 20 years So I just want to turn your analysis around and say the county board to supervisors in the city council So the representatives of your constituent population Yeah, and the degree to which they can communicate your message you can simultaneously kick that information back upstairs and say We're doing apricots great, but we need to do better with peaches and strawberries So I mean, oh, yeah, I don't think that would be in the same county to tell you the truth Absolutely, I mean I've worked extensively in Sutter and Yuba and so I know what a peach County Yes, exactly and and Sutter and you but Sutter County is a peach County. Yeah, absolutely strawberries is more on the coast Yeah, exactly. I apologize To Roy springhurst the founder of the strawberry in California. This ucd is known around the world 40% of the strawberries grown in the world consumed are Roy springhurst Developed exactly uc Davis. Yeah, we get eight million dollars a year for that. Yeah UCD does I don't Okay back to reality anything more about your job and what you're doing and what are the challenges that you have in your job So there are a variety of challenges. It's interesting So right now, thankfully the economy for the most part in California is doing pretty well But there are regionally some places where it's not doing so well So what a good example of this is Kern County Kern County receives down near Bakersfield receives, you know, Southern Central Valley receives a vast majority of its budget from oil Oil money, right? There's a lot of drilling these little small wells that are all over Kern County currently that you know, they extract a lot of oil and they receive a lot of money from the extraction of oil in Kern County and they and that's funds a lot of their budget and down there Well, because the price of oil has plummeted to such low levels This the county hit, you know, oil money receipts have dropped Significantly, so what is happening right now is that the board of supervisors in Kern County is having this debate What programs do they keep and what programs do they cut and so the county board is boards of supervisors fund Cooperative extension activities in pretty much every county across the state and they have the ability to set those budgets and increase them and also cut them so Right now what we're facing in Kern County is we're facing a situation where We have members of the board's board of supervisors that do not necessarily see the value in the cooperative extension program even though Kern County is a massive Agricultural County and the University of California cooperative extension program Provides Kern County with a huge amount of programs and resources for all of their ag sort of needs down there agricultural needs We've been having a real real struggle making sure that the board of supervisors in Kern County is willing to sort of help continue to fund That that cooperative extension program. So my loaded political question is What does the Congress representative from that district have to say about that being that he's in the leadership? Yeah, absolutely Kevin McCarty. Kevin McCarty absolutely number two person the person who was this close to being the speaker very close exactly He actually You know again UC ANR provides and through the cooperative extension program provides a lot of different services So everything from the sort of agri strict agricultural side of things and and farm advisors and things like crop specialty crop You know Experts and academic researchers and such on that side But then they also an are also provides of course and cooperative extension provides, you know other types of program It's more human human services type programs, you know Nutrition for for low-income individuals nutrition education for low-income individuals and things like that for also for children with the cow fresh program So that is, you know They are frankly more interested in preserving the funding for the ag Programs and maybe not as much the human services side of things. It's not surprise. Yeah, not surprising but you know the the programs are both both sets of programs are Work very well and are essential frankly especially in a place like Kern County Which has a fair share of challenges and are incredibly cost-effective very very cost-effective food stamps is without a doubt The most cost-effective guy. I mean I I love my postal carrier. She and I talk every chance we get her names Michelle I'm helping her write a book It's about a girl and her names Victoria Anyway, the postal service is a very efficient thing. Yeah food stamps is incredibly efficient Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's it's the most efficient program in the United States government So it's those are that that's an example of the type of issues that I've been dealing with in just a few short months of being with the University of California. I've really enjoyed it so far We live in such an amazing state, you know And so getting to travel around California and just see both the natural beauty But also just sort of experience all the different communities and it's been really really wonderful so far I'm looking forward to continuing that work in the years to come. So yeah That's I got a lot of things to talk to you about after we get off the show okay, so Will Arnold the candidate for counsel Rob Davis the Mayor pro tem and the next mayor and you have all announced that You want to see a new general plan? Yes? Absolutely. So talk about the general plan and your concerns about it Yeah, so, you know the the basics are that the city's general plan is just outdated I mean simply outdated and it and there's and while some of it is still I would say Some of I'll say the bones are okay, right? You know the bones are still there There is a real need for sort of some revamping of the rest of the general plan You know the city's general plan is broken down into a variety of elements Okay, the transportation element the housing element the sort of safety element. There's a variety of different things We You know the city's general plan was start the last general plan update was started in roughly 1993 It was almost, you know, you know, seven to ten year process of updating, you know 30 different city commissions or or subgroups about 300 citizens participating in it I think yourself, you know, you participate in one if I'm not mistaken or if one or more But it was adopted in about 2000 2001 the time frame set up on the city's general plan was for a roughly 10 year horizon To about 2020 10 is when it sort of what became, you know, essentially outdated at that point here We are in 2016 You know the the population that was sort of envisioned in the you know the 1993, but we'll say the 2000 but the 2000 general plan The upper end population limit was approximately 60 65,000 64,000 We're above that currently we're you know zeroing in on 70,000 and Davis But then the other issue with the current the general plan that we have in place I say current but the current version that is outdated is that There are a variety of things that the general plan really didn't even address so Whether people believe in the issue of climate change or not The you know, whether it's happening or not. I certainly do. There's no Real mention in the city's general plan regarding climate change or adaptation policies and how we would actually sort of go about doing that Moving forward. There's no conversation in the city's general plan regarding sort of The sort of climate adaptation or you know climate action plan, you know as well that type of thing how we how the city responds to some of these things 53% of our carbon footprint is due to the automobile. Yes, absolutely. So so basically the general plan transportation element Could be designed so it focuses on sustainability in ways that it doesn't do now That's absolutely. So that's an example of how the thinking has changed so much in the last 25 years That we need to reconceptualize what it is. They should be Absolutely, no, you're right. Absolutely. It's and I was just going to say that one other Example is many cities across the state of California are instituting Public health elements right or youth elements as well in their in the general plan and so in their respective general plans So which is something that is You know, I think that's a does not exist in our general plan But it's also something that's very important and you know, we've not really Put an emphasis on on those items And so that's something that you know, I think we should be Cognizant of moving forward and and look at you know Seeing if there's a desire within the folks in the community to actually have that type of element included in our general plan so I'm I'm gonna be as unobnoxious here as I can about what I care about the most so I'm not really interested in general plans I when when I When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a city manager So I've got an inch. I was an econ major at UCD and I got an internship with the chief administrator of the State Department of Mental Health and There were 14 state hospitals and they were closing the county house Closing the state hospitals and setting up County mental health programs. That was 40 years ago That was when I got involved in state administration and Then I did County mental health work for five years in administration and then I worked in the legislature and then I got a bunch of ideas about local government and and Had to start over so I Took a class in in systems theory in Sac State in grad school and at the end of the class the professor told me about this book Which was then brand new is called platform for change by Stafford beer and 20 years later So that was in 1976 so in 1993 17 years later, I met the author's girlfriend and It was so obvious that I love this book That he called me up and he asked me to write the Reader's Guide that's in the back of the this edition So I got the last eight pages in my favorite book. So I wrote this in 1993 John is involved in setting up the Davis community network a residential city-wide computer network linked to the internet John recently convinced the Davis City Council to run a three-year planning process That's Sue Greenwald Chang Haydn took seven years with To revise the city general plan with over 200 citizen volunteers on 14 committees with issues ranging from housing Transportation land use and open space which are state mandated elements to economics health and social services and Computers which are not required elements of the city general plan There's more in there, but I'm not going to waste your time That's great. The the point is That we set up committees that dealt with things that were in the mandated elements which are housing and Transportation and land use but we also set up some committees in the areas that were not mandated And there were five areas that were eliminated last time that I think we need to talk about those are youth seniors arts Computer networking, which is a whole a whole new discussion. Yeah, and then economic development what what This is actually the theme of what I need to talk about When we talk about economic development at the local level, we only talk about land use We don't talk about real people, right? We don't talk about land use and development Accepting terms of money and not in terms of people sure if we start And what I'm proposing we do is we look at Davis as it's about 12 Communities and look at the economy of each of those communities and see how they can be helped That's where I'm headed So what I'm proposing to the city council is that the next city council actually become a charter Commission and we go through the process in about nine months of Creating a charter for the city of Davis the state Constitution has a provision called home rule Right a quarter of the cities in California are charter cities. Yeah San Francisco Sacramento LA San Diego the big ones, of course Chico Marysville Roseville Berkeley like they're West Sacramento. Yeah, actually West Sacramento is not I thought they were yeah, but But Marysville and Napa so The point is the city council has more authority than they have so the way I describe it is like this This is a general law city three quarters of the cities in California. Whatever the legislature says you do The other quarter is like this if the legislature said do it You're probably gonna do it if they said don't do it. You're probably not But there are other areas youth seniors Communication with the computer networking art and then economic development We've got to find new ways of creating jobs we've got to find new ways of actually serving the local community without being so energy extravagant and We've got data pollution. I mean we we have tremendous Inefficiency now and how we do government. So I think that there are a lot of things that could be changed and so I just want to read you two sections from the The League of Cities the California League of Cities has a section on charter cities So this is this explains the state law. This is the only part I'm going to read The California Constitution gives cities the power to become charter cities The benefit of becoming a charter city is that charter cities have supreme authority over municipal affairs and the court defines Municipal affairs, so if there's any question the court says the city's wrong you have to do the state law In other words a charter cities law concerning a municipal affair will trump a state law governing the same topic subject to court evaluation The Charter City provision of the state Constitution commonly referred to as the home rule provision is Based on the principle that a city rather than the state is in the best position to know what it needs and how to satisfy Those needs the home rule provision allows charter cities to conduct their own business and control their own affairs and the courts ruled in 1889 that that was the law so since 1889 The UC cities that have become charter cities include Merced Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara LA, Irvine, and San Diego I tried to do it geographically from the north the only city that's a UC city That's a general law city is Davis. So we have a competitive disadvantage with our sister cities around the state Okay, that's enough about the charter now. Let's get back to reality the Community energy Program so explain that sure so I can say it right next year community choice energy CCE okay explain what it so community choice energy allows for Local government so in this case we're working collaboratively with Yolo County on establishing a joint powers authority But the city of Davis and Yolo County we would purchase power. We have the ability to purchase power And in create, you know sign contracts for purchasing power both greener power and less expensive Then what is currently offered by PG&E are our primary utility? So PG&E though as the utility they would still control the transmission Okay, the transition to meant transmission lines and they would still deliver the power But the city of Davis and the in Yolo County would basically purchase power on behalf of the citizenry and We would you would see the city Doing that would likely we would work on the ability to have greener power So more solar more wind, you know hydro those types of biomass those types of energy but also The real benefit and the other thing is that if a citizen or rate payer does not want to participate In the program they simply opt out they so everyone and they get billed by PG&E, right? Yeah, everyone is currently everyone would be it first of all we're about 18 months away from its starting But that both the city council unanimously approved as well as the Yolo County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Forming a community choice energy program here in Yolo County There are several models that are being pursued and up and running in other parts of the state particularly Marin County Sonoma County when I knew about five years. Yeah Marin County was one of the pioneers certainly But what they have done over the past several years is they have all the cities in Marin County plus Marin County have joined and Then they've actually expanded geographically to be contiguous with Marin County Folks around the Bay, so the city of Richmond is now a member of the city of El Cerrito The city of Benisha is also a member of the unincorporated Napa County is also well, so it's grown a bit Wow, so Wano County. Yep. Yep all the way. I mean, that's all that's not just across the bay Yeah, that's on the other side of the bridge. Yeah, absolutely So they though the re and we explored that option of potentially join they asked us to consider joining with Marin Mce has their active Pacific 10 is not a Pacific 47 UC Davis could play Cowling's exactly and that's that's actually why we chose to not join them though I think we feel like we would have been the city of Davis and Yolo County would have been members essentially 19 and 20 of Mce literally with their board of directors being one member from each of the jurisdictions that is a member so Davis and Yolo County would have literally been votes number 19 and 20 Board of Directors that large with frankly, they're doing a great job But they're likely to continue to keep expanding and so but then also Sonoma County like the European Union exactly in a many ways It's not it's not a liability No, they so let me go back for a minute just to finish your analysis and say that wouldn't be a liability It would be a different program. It wouldn't have as much Unilateral authority because you buy into the program as they've already established it But it's it's like if you're the first kid on the family you Train the parents when you're the fourth kid in the family the parents not going to take You know what you have to say twice right because they know what happens if they do it comes at third time So, you know if you have a problem as Yolo part of Marin County, they're gonna go Oh, yeah, we've heard about that problem. Sorry. Yeah Absolutely. No, no, you're right. And so the reason the ultimate reason that we chose To sort of go our own path is is the issue of local control. Good. I mean at me first and foremost So we have we have good working relationships We've worked very much so in the past few years in the city council to continue to establish good working relationships with a lot of our local sister agencies rights Yolo County or other sister cities in the throughout the county And we have the ability also to generate a lot of that power locally So the city we're very fortunate the city owns the PV USA site sure up along Pull line road I'm happy we're in the DMA studio. So I'm sort of pointing in that direction now But along Pull line road headed towards Woodland just outside of that's north and just north Is the is the PV USA site which is a solar farm that the city of Davis owns currently The solar energy that is produced there goes into the you know, the electric grid currently and PG&E gets it So there's an accounting system. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So we have that it's a currently about a 20 acre site at PV USA But the city owns 83 acres there and the ability to expand that solar farm is very easily to very very easily done And you know as we get into a situation with where we actually launched the community choice energy program with along with Yolo County We will I think seek to again create more locally generated energy Which is sort of the direction that the energy industry is moving in already and then also we have a lot more efficient It's much more efficient, you know The real cost in the in the electricity world in the energy world right now is that you know You build a power plant here and the people are over here and then you have to string wires You know for a hundred miles to bring that electricity across and that's where the major amount of money is being spent I know I don't know what an amp is I don't know what a watt is and I don't know what a volt is I spent a year in engineering school at UC Davis It's why I didn't become an engineer. I do know what an ohm is. Oh, yeah An ohm is resistance you put electricity through a wire and some of it gets heated up. Yeah, that's energy loss Yeah, absolutely so it's You know the key is to start Doing what is known as distributed generation right generate Electricity locally on rooftops and on solar farms next to cities and things of that nature So we're gonna that's what we're gonna be doing and it's represents our very good collaboration with Yolo County We're hopeful that in the next couple of years we can entice Some of the other local cities nearby whether they're here in Yolo County You know West Sacramento or woodland or winters or even some of our other, you know So just across the Solano County border, you know, the city of Dixon as an example To try and entice them to join we also believe that there's an ability to have Ultimately less expensive energy costs as well, you know, not not hugely less expensive than be PG But you know minimally minimally 5% lower but up to 10% lower The other real benefit aside from besides the local control aspect is that Every rate payer in California Currently pays what's called the pop up a little bit of money each month to PG knee called the public goods charge it is a Pot of money that gets set aside and it gets read It's the point of that pot of money is for the utilities including this case PG knee to reinvest that money into communities in For a variety of programs, but you know weatherization programs for houses energy efficiency programs Well, the city of Davis ratepayers pay approximately four million dollars per year from their utility bills to PG knee and PG knee is often not that forthcoming with How you know that where that money is necessarily being spent so is that four million that goes into that pot? That's correct into a big pot. Yeah, so like maybe 500 million dollars It's not it's not that large no no no so the point was just going to be that we put four million a year into this as Right payers and and that money is supposed to come back to our community I mean, you know in the form of these types of programs, but is it like 1% which would yeah It's a very very tiny. Yeah, about 1% sort of well that I mean that would be 500 million dollars right total Yeah, spent on energy in Davis. Yeah, which I mean my my bills Expensive and I don't have much at all We're not sure that that all of that those dollars are coming back every year We're not seeing any right those types of programs being instituted so the ability there is an ability in the future for us to as ratepayers still we still Man be mandated by the state to have to pay that that public goods charge for you know public use Into this pot of money, but then we would actually have the ability with our community choice energy program to actually set up Locally controlled and run and operated programs that would benefit the city of Davis and Yolo County as an example so There are a variety of reasons to sort of pursue The community choice energy program and we're very fortunate that we have you know in Davis We the city council that does not have the expertise in these issues You know set up a community choice energy advisory committee made up of folks all you know volunteers from out the committee But folks who are you know have worked for the California independent system operator who worked for the Public Utilities Commission who have You know vast amounts of experience and knowledge professional expertise. Absolutely. Yvonne Hunter who is the At the time retired now But was the chief lobbyist at the League of California cities that was staffing the community choice energy bill as it went through the legislature 15 years ago, so you know all those folks Served on in a bunch of folks served on this body and helped provide us just excellent You know background and knowledge and in decision-making You know sort of the advice that they provide helped us to make excellent decisions with regard to this this choice So we look forward to the next couple of years as we sort of take the next steps here with the county and roll out this new program This is a an example of Another experiment in local government. Yes, and one of the advantages that you have with local government is you can try something and See how it worked In 2003 we were on the co-op board. Yeah, and the co-op at that point was at the beginning of working with policy governance so I I'm torn between trying to ask you the questions. I want to answer and just sing it myself. So I'll probably just talk At that point We were we the Davis food co-op board were about halfway into policy governance so we were talking about it and and There are these statements that you agree to and then the point is to govern to those statements And we had about half of those statements done and we were talking as though we were finished and I joined the board and came to that conclusion And so if you took what everybody on the board Except for lucas knew It was about the same amount as what lucas knew Because you were on the board that actually went through like two years before Putting this package together. So I call what lucas knew to be one lucas And by the next meeting I had become three lucas. Okay. I had I dove into the books I dove into the internet I I read John Carver. I figured out what he was doing And I studied it and I said Everybody on the board has to get to six lucas And then we'll be able to create the process and go through it and in the course of the year we did that Yeah, absolutely Now there are many reasons why I told you that story and now I'll tell you the main one I'm now proposing that the city council go through that process During the next year Publicly Yeah with as much community involvement as we can and my goal is at least 25 of the citizens be involved in the charter development, so hopefully you're Considered that to be interesting enough that it's not just complicated So now back to what happened with the co-op What we did was we had a meeting and and you know like the old city council We we weren't very well organized and we needed a new mission statement in my opinion Our mission statement was about 50 words that had all these nice things in it about equality and Equal pay and all this stuff But it really wasn't us so We sat down we had a Board all day retreat And and at 10 o'clock The agenda item was a new mission statement and and lunch was scheduled for 12 30 And the nicest woman on the on the board who'd been on the board the year before said If we're not done by 12 30 can we still have lunch right? Because she had no confidence that we were going to be able to make a decision the nine of us on the board and the staff and after about an hour I Said recycling. I mean that's not me. I mean we had like 85 things on the list See this is why I didn't want to ask lucas to tell this. I wanted to tell it myself And then the lawyer in the group did something. I've never seen a lawyer do before He got to the point He said wait a minute. We're going at this in the wrong direction. It's not all the things It's what's the central thing right? Is it food Or is it community? Yeah, and I got goosebumps right now because Then one of the staff people Held up an imaginary zucchini like it was a Lincoln log and said we build community with food And cooperative principles and in the next 10 minutes the woman who hoped we'd have lunch Came up with Community principles covered all the rest of the things that you know, we talked about external affairs We talked about treating the staff right we talked about treating the customers right We talked about working with the farmers all of that's in cooperative principles. We added down to seven words Now it is possible to create a new concept and then legitimize it and find a way to express it So my hope with the charter is that we can go through that kind of process Policy governance is part of that policy governance gets away from the bureaucracy So with that as an opening, what do you think about policy governance? And then I'll Close that part. Sure. Yeah, well We certainly, you know, those were very interesting years. I mean the process, you know of being on this co-op or the food co-op board and sort of watching as this this model of governance was sort of You know initially explored by not just this davis food co-op But also cooperatives are all food cooperatives all around the country It really became a phenomena that the food co-op world really picked up and you had several, you know food cooperatives around the country sort of working in tandem in various stages of doing this and I actually often wonder how I don't know, you know If you've kept up with sort of John Carver as the author of and sort of originator of policy governance at all But you know it would be interesting to find out, you know, what sort of status policy governance is in you being used in today I'll get into that in a minute. Excellent. Go ahead. But we uh, You know the the reason for instituting policy governance initially was that we had a situation or multiple situations over the years Where you had individual directors On the board of directors who essentially were trying it would try to pursue their own specific agenda, right? You know, I want a I want a store in west davis, right? I'm that's my specific not me But this is saying you know someone I want a store in west davis or I want this or I want that And instead of determining what the what was good for the organization or also what the the body wanted to pursue So policy governance actually really helped to uh, tamp down that you know individual sort of agenda driven You know conversation rhetoric that that was happening at the time And so we were able to you know by creating ends, you know end statements Which are sort of the the lofty goals of what we wanted to see the co-op achieve And then following all the different types of boundaries policies and keeping everything else You know in check. I think that was a pretty pretty good process for the food co-op It's interesting because I know another organization in davis that at the same time was also I didn't realize this until just a few years ago But I know the unitarian church actually that was also a phenomenon that sort of 10 years ago The unitarian churches are unitarian universalist churches around The u.s. Also became sort of interested in policy governance and so and and started to do the same sort of process And and you know, I do know of a couple and uh cities across the country that utilized it brian texas I think is the primary sort of the the most well-known example college town as well though in in texas But you know, it was a very interesting process for us as the davis food co-op We we did learn I think quite a bit from that but we're also, you know It was it was definitely there were some times when you know as a as of any new process You're putting in place and one that's new to everybody, you know There was a fair amount of just sort of hand wringing and just trying to figure out how you know it how But what we were doing is if it was actually succeeding or not right and it was how do you actually measure it and so it was always really nice to be able to go to the The national food co-op conference every year it's rotates around the country and you you would recognize that Oh wait, you know the the issues that we've been having and facing in our own town and our own food cooperative Are also the same issues that are fated, you know communities and co-ops are facing all around the country so we weren't alone and that was always very reassuring but It sometimes, you know, you you get so bogged down sort of the blinders on you get so bogged down and in the day to day Operations of how things are going that you kind of fail to see see the forest the trees and realize Oh, there's actually You know, we're not alone in this and there's other people out there experiencing the same types of things So a very good experience overall But yeah, we definitely love to hear your thoughts too as to What you know what you see is both the successes of policy governance or and then sort of how it's being applied today So i'm going to start by not answering what you just asked me I'm going to start with how it started sure so When I was in placerville as a 23 year old kid arguing with a psychiatrist and the psychologist and the social worker John carver was doing the same thing Only he was in Michigan or Ohio or Illinois one of those states And he had a federally funded Community mental health program, which was one of the innovations of john f kennedy And I don't know there were 150 or 200 of these focus programs I I assume That hannah penn county minnesota Was one of the places because there was more innovation in community mental health In that county than anywhere else in the united states during during the time I was involved And it was all about community dynamic Sure It was all about creating a mental health support system with the barber and with the taxi driver and the hairdresser and the pastor And the cop. Yeah, those are the people that are providing mental health services every day The guy at the 7 11 store at three o'clock in the morning is the primary support system that most People on the street have so it's An incredible challenge well This I'm going to contrast two things here first I'm going to talk about what john did and compare that to the co-op But then I'm going to compare that to what I want to do in terms of the city and the city council Because I don't think it's the same thing What john carver had was he had a mental health advisory board that was council And as with members in the middle of the Food co-op board Some of them wanted to go in a particular direction and they got on the board to be going in that direction The fact that they weren't spending unlimited time in that direction is a mistake And when we need to correct that mistake when you have nine people like that on your board You're going in nine different directions And there's no help at all Well by comparison the people on the job every day It's the headache they go home with it's not something that they dream about on saturday afternoon And so the challenge is if you're doing the job 24 7 How do you get somebody that's a community person to help you out? And so the the concept behind policy governance is what can the board do That can most effectively help the organization Serve its community Whatever it is And what carver came to the conclusion was was the main thing was communication between the group The people that are being served And the board and the degree to which the board can do what's what we and the co-op call member outreach Uh meet with the board of directors dinner with the board of directors You know we we tried a bunch of different things to just do outreach to get people to say This is the way we'd like to see it better Because you can find in those kind of conversations room for improvement And it gets me on just complaining about what's going on so with What I used to say in the food co-op was What can the board be asked to do to take some of the load off of the management of the day-to-day operations? And a lot of that's about what should our hands be where should we be going? I think they came the board came up with be the center of the food shed. Oh, right. Yes Which if you think about watershed the food shed The ucd is still talking about the world food center being in sacramento, but the davis food co-ops Actually the world food center so well i'll end my speech on that note the The idea of policy governance in the city you referred to brian texas brian texas is right next to texas a and m on the other side of texas a and m is college park so brian texas has about 50 000 people And they decided about 25 years ago to go with policy governance. So their general plan is two pages long It's a series of positive statements. The water will be acceptable to drink Now that includes a scientific definition of acceptable And once a month or once a year depending on the report The brian texas public engineer makes a report on the water quality and says we are in compliance with the city plan Now that's what i'm proposing we do for our general plan as opposed to a bunch of negative statements What we have in this general plan is an attempt to go back to winners It's an attempt to make davis is conservative architecturally and transit wise and economically as possible And that was the intention of the last general plan And it's lasted a long time. So It would be great if we could get a new general plan that people could relate to yeah, absolutely Yeah, it's a challenge and I think you know and I appreciate the You know both raising this idea with the council current council, but also the proposal of Sort of how we might be able to institute it in you know after the election and sort of get into that with the new council Um I am I really appreciate the optimism of you know suggestion and of not a nine-month time frame You know because I think one of the things that unfortunately we do really well and davis You know is uh make things go on artificially along for a long way. So I think that You know definitely aiming for a uh You know a shorter you know targeted for a focused time frame in which to sort of uh, you know Either move towards the charter or just an even updated general plan any and or all the above needs to happen But it also needs to be targeted and focused and and done in a timely manner You know the when we updated the city's housing element a few years ago You know that that process uh was you know, uh an appointment by the city council of 15 individuals You know as a committee essentially and it took about less than two years But we were very focused targeted had every other week meetings And we're able to produce really great results But also in a timely manner not just having this prolonged, you know drag on drag on drag on type type situation So I'm hopeful for that uh as we you know in the next uh and the next sort of after the council election We get into the fall here to move move in that direction Well, I'm proposing that the council actually consider it seriously in july enough The staff is ready in september and move into using thursday nights for talking about a Charter and then systematically go through land use one week housing the next week transportation the next week recreation taxes and finances And then end by talking about economic development sure Um and go through that in september october and november and then in january have the council Seriously review a draft document for a new charter and finish in february To put it on the council election special election in june And then it could go into effect on the first of july which is the 100th anniversary gave us becoming a city So we became a city in april of 1917 Thanks for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it Great. This is what's going on. Thanks for watching. Good evening